As at end March 2021, there was a record stock of silver held in London vaults. In total there was 38,859 tonnes of silver, representing an 11%* increase on the previous month, valued at $30 billion which equates to approximately 1,259,310 silver bars.
There was also 9,461 tonnes of gold, valued at $514.4 billion, which equates to approximately 756,883 gold bars.
These figures provide an important insight into London’s ability to underpin the physical OTC market.
The publication on the fifth business day of each month of the amount of gold the London vaults were holding at the end of the previous month follows the recent move to publish the equivalent data for silver. It represents a continued move towards greater transparency and timeliness.
The data represents the holdings of six custodians offering vaulting services (all of which are LBMA members). They comprise three security carriers (Brinks, Malca-Amit and Loomis International Ltd) and three clearing banks (HSBC, ICBC Standard Bank and JP Morgan). Also included are the gold holdings held at the Bank of England (not an LBMA member) which offers gold (but not silver) custodial services to central banks and certain commercial firms that facilitate central bank access to the liquidity of the London gold market.
Those clearing members without their own vault operations – for example UBS - utilise their accounts with one of the LBMA custodians or the Bank of England and therefore do not contribute to the statistics to avoid double counting.
*A data submission error led to the publication of an incorrect aggregate figure for the total silver held in London vaults in March. The corrected figure is 1,143,194 Troy ounces ('000s).